While the world mostly sees San Francisco as a locus of breathtaking vistas marred by Silicon Valley sycophancy, locals love it for its gritty underbelly of artists striving to tell their stories through all the noise. For them, the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival (Sat/14, 4 Star Theater, SF) returns to celebrate this spirit by showcasing locally made short films reveling in offbeat mayhem and unexpected poignancy.
The festival, now organized by queer art collective Media Meltdown, features more than 35 shorts either shot in or by Bay Area filmmakers, shown across four programming slots of roughly two hours each. It will also include weird and wild live entertainment between each slot, including a drag performance from Bonita Rose and music from experimental producer AroMA.
The festival aims to platform films made within the last 5 years with a runtime of 30 minutes or less that would have a hard time getting into more traditional festivals, due to their esoteric, avant-garde nature. In fact, this ethos is what birthed the festival in the first place.
SFUSFF was founded by drag performers Peaches Christ and Vinsantos in 2003 at the Bridge Theatre as a means to showcase their own short films that were being overlooked by the festival circuit. SFUSFF ran under their care for six years until 2008. After Vinsantos moved to New Orleans, Peaches and fellow film programmer Sam Sharkland revived the fest in 2011 at the Victoria Theatre where it ran until 2015.
In 2025, the festival found a new home at the 4 Star Theater under the care of Piranha Psychotronica and Kafka X, the sci-fi/fantasy drag-oriented minds behind Media Meltdown.
“The festival was gone for 10 years, but I felt that it embodied something really amazing about what I love about San Francisco—and specifically our arts community,” said Piranha when asked about the motivations behind the resurrection.
“It shows the kind of ingenuity and creativity that can come from working outside of a system. This isn’t LA or New York, we don’t have the same infrastructure but people are still making incredible stuff. “
Established drag performers, filmmakers and all-around artistes themselves, the married drag couple take great pride in their curation, having meticulously selected the lineup from over 300 submissions.
“We really try to create a wide sampling of local independent filmmaking,” said Kafka. “We verge towards things that embody an underground spirit, things that may have trouble getting programmed in other festivals, things that really focus on subject matters or stylistic measures that you may not see in mainstream films.”
Much like some of the films being screened, the programming itself follows a descent from familiar tales into lustful mayhem. “The films do get darker and sexier over the course of the evening,” said Piranha with a laugh.
“Our first block is our most family-friendly. There’s a lot of heartwarming stuff, a lot of comedy. The second block is also comedy-focused, but there’s documentary sprinkled in there, along with dramas and romance. Block three is very surreal and horror-driven, and the final block is smutty.”
SFUSFF has been a home for all strains of DIY filmmakers, from established local creators to students looking to premiere their first film, as long as they embody punk attitude in their techniques. Psychedelic pastiches, outlandish hybrids of animation and live-action, anthologies-cum-documentaries, audio collages all go into the mix.
“We received one submission that was filmed under the table at a Round Table Pizza by the staff of a Round Table Pizza,” recounts Piranha, referring to P i z z a p a r t y by Kyle C. Johnson. “I think it says in the credits they were fired shortly after for unrelated reasons.”
Kafka highlighted DEAD MARCH TO PARADISE by Evelyn Haixuan Cao as a tearjerker to look out for in the first block. “Even though I said that slate is more family-friendly, that’s a very visceral and gut-wrenching film,” Kafka said. “It’s a soul-shattering piece about Chinese immigration to California at the turn of the 20th century, specifically with a focus on women who were immigrating and oftentimes coerced into sex. I think people are gonna really be affected by it.”
The duo also shouted out Y2KAGE by Jazzy Boho and OUTTA CUNTROLL by Cake Bitch, Stevie Rose, and Jes Gallegos in the final 18+ block as funny, outlandish, erotic and somewhat pornographic films that audiences are sure to have a good time with.
Still from Charlie Chompers: The Seal that Bites People (dir. McGillis)
Even between organizing this film festival and their monthly Media Meltdown Movie Madhouse screenings, Piranha and Kafka are keeping busy with a host of other projects. They relish the myriad of ways drag intersects with other forms of entertainment, having created art across many mediums, from campy short films to choose-your-own-adventure style plays and a slew of culturally relevant drag performances all over the Bay.
“I think drag is really interesting as an art form because it’s very visual,” said Kafka when asked about the inspiration behind the duo’s interdisciplinary works.
“When you watch a film, it’s a constellation of different people’s creative input—lighting, directing, makeup, and so on. I find so much joy in being able to break down the creative product into those pieces, and then get to kind of explore each of those individually through both costuming and emulating film characters within drag.
This appreciation for the collaborative language of film came to the fore in the duo’s hilarious drag interpretation Lance Oppenheimer’s You Can See Everything, with Piranha as Elizabeth Holmes and Kafka as Nathan Fielder, for a recent A24-themed drag night at The Stud in SoMA.
When asked about films that have inspired their performances and drag identity, the duo’s answers spanned a surprisingly wide gamut in terms of production style.
“I’ll shout out Vegas in Space, which is a locally made film, by director Philip R. Ford, that stars a group of drag performers,” said Piranha excitedly. “It was shot over many years, all in San Francisco living rooms, where they completely transformed people’s little flats into alien planets.
“It’s a sci-fi film, very decadent and camp. It’s not a perfect product, but it’s very beautiful in that it came out of all of that blood, sweat, and tears, and I think that that’s something that endlessly inspires me as a performer.”
Kafka cites Ken Russell as a core inspiration. “He’s a director who’s always really inspired me, mostly just because of the actual drag elements in the film and the opulence,” he said. “I’ve already seen at least one Devils-inspired drag number, so I know that there are other people in the community that also love his work.”
Low-budget surrealism and strangeness (along with some bonkers Russell-style ambition) will certainly abound at this celebration of independent filmmaking, the perfect night for cinephiles with a penchant for the perturbed and a bent for the bizarre.
SAN FRANCISCO UNDERGROUND SHORT FILM FESTIVAL Sat/14, 2:15pm-12:30am, 4 Star Theater, SF. Tickets and more info here.
